Postal delivery service Whistle employs around 1,000 people in Liverpool and Manchester

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Hundreds of Liverpool jobs are at risk at a postal delivery firm which employs around 700 people in the North West.

Whistl, formerly known as TNT Post, has suspended its door-to-door letterbox service after an investment arm of Lloyds Bank withdrew its plans to invest in an expansion of the service.

The company has depots in Liverpool, Manchester and London and employs around 2,000 staff across the country – 269 of them in Liverpool.

As a result of private equity unit, Lloyds Development Capital (LDC), pulling out of plans to invest, a review of the postal service is now being carried out.

A statement by the firm said: “Following the announcement from LDC (the private equity arm of Lloyds Bank) that it would not proceed with the proposed investment to fund further rollout of E2E (End to End the postal delivery part of the service) we have now commenced an extensive review of the viability and potential for the rollout of an e2e postal delivery service in the UK.

“To stem the losses from the operations we have taken the difficult decision to suspend the current E2E service during the review process and all mail will now be delivered through our long-standing downstream access service until we have concluded the review.

“As part of this extensive review, we will begin consultations with the relevant employees who are affected by the suspension of the E2E service, and with their union representatives, with a view to identifying and exploring viable proposals to secure the continuation of this service.”

Workers are represented by the trade union, Community, and national officer Les Bayliss said: “Understandably, our members are extremely concerned and worried for their futures.

“Community has a meeting of our senior reps on Tuesday where we will begin to develop our response to the company’s consultation. We will be doing all we can to identify a viable way forward for the business that safeguards our members’ jobs.

“We should be clear that this is a suspension of the business not a termination of it, so we will be looking for the company to work with us to identify sustainable options to continue operations as soon as practically possible.”

An LDC spokesperson added: “LDC has confirmed that discussions to establish a joint venture with PostNL to roll out its end-to-end (E2E) postal delivery service in the UK have now concluded and will not progress to completion.

“LDC has decided to withdraw from the discussions due to ongoing changes in UK postal market dynamics and the complexity of the regulatory landscape.”

And a Royal Mail spokesman said it was ready to accept the additional volumes of mail into its network and says it liaising with Whistl.